Measurement, solar teloscopes, and spelling words OH MY!!!

2 weeks until school is over and I have to say goodbye to my very first class.

TWO

WEEKS

Ok that's enough of that. Trust me there will plenty of sads being had.

This week we were studying Measurement in Math!!

We measured our friends!

Our room!

Our hallway!

We measured pretty much everything. We talked about standard vs. non standard measurements. Did you know that 22 of Simon's steps equal 16 of Miss Bailey's steps? WE DID!!!

Today we explored weight by becoming human balances.

Why is paper so light, but books are heavy?

Math is fun!

This week we also started practicing spelling words to prepare for FIRST GRADE!!!

Our spelling tests for the next few weeks aren't for a grade but that didn't stop these super spellers from knocking it out of the park. 

Something I learned this week is Spelling word practice is actually very fun! We played "Cherry Pie" (the Kentucky version of "Sparkle" brought to our school by the first grade teacher next door) and one of our reading groups got to write the spelling words in shaving cream (this was a big hit, we will be making sure to do this for all the reading groups next week). 

I even heard about some fun ways our friends were practicing at home like spelling the words with magnetic letters. All that fun and hard work really paid off because the spelling "tests" were fantastic! Even the words that some of the kids missed showed that they are really thinking and trying even when they aren't sure. I am so super proud of these smarties!!

On Tuesday we had Astronomy Day at school, we got to look at the sun through a solar telescope (it was pretty cloudy though and some of the kids couldn't really see the sun).

At the end of the day we learned about sunspots, flares, prominences, and what exactly that solar telescope did. (Spoiler alert: it was for locating sunspots)

Then it was sun cookie time!!

First a base layer of white.

Then some red and yellow sugar sprinkles.

Twizzlers flares and prominences; the flares on the sun shoot straight up and the prominences are like a bridge.

 Then some chocolate chip sunspots.












Finally time to eat that yummy sun.

***No suns were damaged during the making of this snack.

It was a fantastic week in Kindergarten and we aren't done with the fun yet!!

God Bless!

Genesis 1:16 - "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he also made the stars."

Addition Superstars!!!

Whoops I have been away for far too long! Every time I would remember to post I would also remember that my memory card was at school, teacher blog FAIL!

We have been learning to add in kindergarten for the last couple of weeks, in fact tomorrow is our "chapter check-up" and I have to be honest I really thought this was going to be tough for my kinders. Alas, they have proven me wrong and have done MARVELOUSLY!!!

We have gotten to do some fun full body movement activities like this:

Acting out the problem.

Emily had the difficult job of solving the equation.

And she did a great job!! 

Number line hopping: we started at one number and counted on by hopping.

Then we put two friends on the number line and they had to figure out how many hops from point A to point B!

This week we also added a writing center to our room just under the word wall. 

The students can write letters, trace the alphabet, and use whiteboards and (the big favorite) chalkboards!

In other "my students are super spectacular news" Miss Jasa read us a story this week.

She did a great job reading the WHOLE book by herself!! 

I also really enjoyed getting to sit with the kids and have someone read to me for a change!!

In reading group:

We played a super fun silent "e" game!

Don't be alarmed that they are reading different pages, this was staged because I forgot to get it when they were actually reading. 

Here are some of the morning messages from this week:

I try to have a message for them each day, their job is to write the message and "butter" the popcorn words. This speeds things up when we go over the message during phonics because they have already found some of the words. They can also "butter" any other words they know how to read. It never ceases to shock me how quickly they notice the words other places, for instance Qwerty had a popcorn word on veggie tales last week and they went nuts when they saw it.

I am so lucky to have these boys and girls in my life they are going to do AMAZING things in the future!

Coming soon: Easter story review week. I CAN'T WAIT!!! I am going to do my best to update each night this week. It should be a very thought provoking week. (I hope)

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11